Sunday, March 16, 2014

This Day in Theater History (‘1776’ Opens in New Era of Revolution)

March 16, 1969—After a decade of striving to bring 1776
to Broadway, its creators were annoyed by any suggestion that their musical
about the turbulent creation of the Declaration of Independence was out of step
with a new generation that had just made Hair
a hit. They felt that, rather than passing, their time had arrived. Thousands
of theatergoers—not to mention three Tony Awards (including Best
Musical)--proved them right. By the time its extraordinary run was over, 1776 had gone on to 1,217
performances in three different Broadway theaters.

The musical did not simply humanize the signers of
the Declaration of Independence, welcome though that may have been. It also
clearly struck a chord with audiences without being politically incorrect. For theatergoers beset everywhere by troubling and seemingly new questions on the meaning and justice of the
American experiment, it showed that even during the nation’s birth, its “fathers”
(just the appropriate word, in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address)wrestled with issues of race, in the form of
slavery; an earlier deeply divisive war, a revolution probably supported by no
more than one-third of the inhabitants of the time; determinedright-wing opponents (and, in articulate
conservative John Dickinson, a sort of forerunner of William F. Buckley Jr.);
and, in the form of John Adams’ fiercely intelligent spouse Abigail, wives
dissatisfied with their lot in a changing world.

Yet 1776
did not make the mistake of another history-based Broadway musical from the
year before, Maggie Flynn, about the
New York City Draft Riots of 1863, in providing no significant respite from material already inherently depressing. (See my prior post on the latter.) Onetime schoolteacher Sherman Edwards composed enough songs with bounce and light to
balance out undeniably darker fare such as “Molasses to Rum to Slaves,” about
the “triangle trade” among Africa, the North and the South that sustained
slavery. And, of course, it featured a happy ending.

The film version, released three years later, can
stand as a fair proxy for the original Broadway production, as it featured the
same director and most of the same cast. (The most significant exception to the
latter was Blythe Danner, who, in the role of Martha Jefferson, had replaced
Betty Buckley, whose debut on Broadway turned out to be an accurate promise for
a fine career in musical theater.)

I came to know 1776
late in elementary school, when I repeatedly played the movie soundtrack and
hunted down the script. At a pretty decisive point in my own education, when I
became extremely interested in history, it opened a door into aspects of
American history that I had not known.

The libretto by Peter Stone (who would go on to
write another book for a musical that strove for historical accuracy, but was much less
financially successful: Titanic) did
an excellent job of detailing Adams’ irascibility, Thomas Jefferson’s
taciturnity, Ben Franklin’s bonhomie—and the strong yen for women that, whether
in marriage (Adams and Jefferson) or outside (Franklin), animated all three.
To be sure, it took a couple of large stabs at dramatic license to heighten the
suspense of the show (in real life, the crafting of the Declaration was a
formality after the epic battle in the Continental Congress to pass the
resolution for independence, and the signing took place over a period of months
rather than a single day), and at least one unjustifiable mischaracterization
(of the solemn Virginia firebrand Richard Henry Lee as a goof, which I discussed in this post).

But musicals can—and they have—been far, far less
historically accurate than this. For instance, another musical about this crucial year in American
history, Rodgers and Hart’s Dearest Enemy, took a real
incident (a Quaker woman who, through hospitality to General Howe, slowed down the British pursuit of the Continental
Army out of New York) and added quite a bit
of fanciful trappings. I suspect that quite a few fans of the show, like me,
became fascinated enough by what they saw on screen or stage to follow up in
reading about the actual history.

I missed the much-praised 1997 Roundabout Theatre
revival starring Brent Spiner. But the show has become a
staple of regional productions all around the country. In recent years, as
Americans have endured the spectacle of a deadlocked Congress, more than a few
people have discovered fresh meaning in the opening scene of the play, when
Adams, his patience exhausted by the slow progress of his attempts to move
independence along, lashes out memorably with: “I have come to the conclusion
that one useless man is a disgrace, that two are called a law firm, and that
three or more become a Congress!”

About Me

I'm a librarian (no, NOT a "cybrarian" or "information scientist" or any of the other trendy terms the profession has come up with), as well as a freelance writer/researcher; my political leanings are contrarian, much to the dismay of friends on the left and right, and so I will give anyone looking for my vote exactly what they deserve -- the back of my hand